A look at Apple's latest toys

Here's a fanboy's impressions of the new products announced by Apple on Tuesday (see video of CEO Steve Jobs' presentation).

Thinner iMacs are made of glass and aluminum and are priced at $1,199 for a 20-inch screen and $1,499 for a 24-inch screen. My thoughts: While it would be nice to have a big screen, my days of having a desktop computer are long gone. The portability (but a little less power) of a laptop computer is a better fit for my lifestyle.

Did we really need a keyboard that looked like this?

Really thin keyboards, with new, stubby keys, can be found on the latest MacBooks. My thoughts: While some might find the design cool, I find it unnecessary. It's just a keyboard.

The Mac Mini gets a speed bump. Still priced at $599 and $799. My thoughts: There were rumors this machine was being phased out, but I'm glad it was improved instead. The $599 model finally has enough horsepower for me to recommend it to any causal Windows user who wants to give a Mac a try. (It basically looks like a desktop tower that got steamrolled.)

iLife '08 has new versions of programs to edit audio (Garageband), video (iMovie), photos (iPhoto) and Web sites (iWeb). Also new is iWork '08, which still has a word processor/page layout program (Pages), a PowerPoint competitor (Keynote) and a new spreadsheet program (Numbers). Each package is $80, and iLife comes with new Macs. Check out TUAW's coverage for more details. My thoughts: I've been disappointed by annual iLife upgrade before, so we'll see how these perform.

Apple's online service, .Mac, upgrades its default space from a measly 1 GB to a measly 10 GB. A cool new feature allows iPhone users to create Web galleries from their phone. My thoughts: I've been a .Mac subscriber for awhile, but at $75 (through Amazon.com... regular price is $99) a year, I've been getting ripped off. Looks like I've got a new excuse to waste money on the service.

One final note: Jobs calls the idea of a Mac that uses a touchscreen technology like the iPhone a research project. My thoughts: I didn't think the iPhone would work as well as it does, so we'll see how this goes.

In the newsArs Technica: Microsoft releases updates for the Vista operating system.